Kickstart: Normalizing the hybrid office

I know a lot of you returned to the office long ago — especially those in essential businesses — but for many companies, the traditional office routine may never return.

Andy Challenger, senior vice president of workforce consulting business Challenger, Gray & Christmas, says that a "new class of remote workers" may be the new norm.

"People that can work from anywhere in the country as companies get used to the coronavirus," he said in an interview with a Chicago television station on Jan. 1. "It may be with us for some time and they're just making some jobs permanently remote."

A 2021 survey by the National Association for Business Economics found that only about 11 percent of companies expected their workers to be fully back in the office.

Pipe maker Uponor North America appears to be one of those companies, announcing Jan. 5 that it has developed "Flexible First, an employee-centric model that empowers staff to choose the working pattern that works best for them."

Uponor workers may be classed as "resident," for those in the office at least four days a week; "hybrid," for people in the office up to three days a week; and "remote," covering people not going into Uponor offices.

Former Environmental Protection Agency head Andrew Wheeler made recycling a bigger priority during his tenure at EPA under former President Donald Trump, setting a goal of a 50 percent recycling rate for the U.S.

Since Trump's defeat in 2020, Wheeler has taken up a cause dear to the plastics industry, testifying against plans for a plastic bag tax in Virginia, where he lives.

Now, the former coal industry lobbyist will get another shot at government.

On Jan. 5, he was nominated to head the Virginia Department of Natural Resources by the state's incoming Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.

There's no indication plastics issues played any role in Wheeler's nomination, but plastics are getting more attention in Virginia.

The biggest example: The Legislature last year passed a compromise plan that banned expanded polystyrene packaging while at the same time giving the plastics industry something it wanted: more favorable regulations for chemical recycling.

Another example: Five Virginia cities and counties launched their own plastic bag taxes Jan. 1.

After Wheeler left the EPA and started working at a Washington think tank, he told a Bloomberg journalist that one of the areas he wanted to work more on was recycling policy, building on his work at EPA.

Thanks to Assistant Managing Editor Steve Toloken for this item.

There's a lot of buzz about electric cars and driver-assistance technologies, but a pair of recent M&A deals in the auto sector points to the companies that make things happen behind the scenes.

First, ABC Technologies, a Toronto-based injection molder and blow molder, announced it purchased dlhBowles, a North Canton, Ohio, company that makes products to clean car surfaces so that visual sensors, radar and lidar systems can actually work.

After all, no one wants their driver assist to go on the fritz because road salt is obscuring a sensor mounted on a headlight.

And then there's Eaton, an automotive powertrain global player that just picked up Illinois-based Royal Power Solutions, a molder of electrical connectors that will be increasingly important for all of those parts of upcoming electric vehicles.

The investments should make sure that both companies will have a part to play in the big investments coming up into new vehicle technologies.